In a highly multilingual country like India, challenges and opportunities arise in education and language policy. Although multilingualism is often associated with developmental advantages, Indian primary school children generally show low learning outcomes, specifically on literacy. Here we examine the influence of mother tongue education and…

According to the Simple View of Reading, decoding and linguistic comprehension are essential for reaching efficient reading comprehension. Students with Swedish as a first (L1) or second language (L2) in grades 1-3 might need special support to develop reading comprehension. In order to identify needs in reading in L1 and L2 students, the current…

Previous studies have suggested that deafness could lead to deficits in motor skills and other body-related abilities. However, the literature regarding motor skills in deaf adults is scarce and existing studies often included participants with heterogeneous language backgrounds and deafness etiologies, thus making it difficult to delineate the…

Studies have found that bilinguals respond differently to personality measures in their two languages, indicating that bilinguals change their personality as they switch between their two languages and/or cultures. Across two experiments, we attempted to investigate the effect of language and culture separately on how bilingual speakers rate…

An expanding literature has explored the impact of second language (L2) self-concept on language achievement and motivation. This review adopts a psychological lens to examine L2 self-concept, beginning with an outline of prominent theoretical frameworks: situated expectancy-value theory; Shavelson et al.'s (1976) hierarchical, multidimensional…

At present, developmental dyslexia is classified as a specific language disorder recognised by inclusive educational laws in Spain and the United Kingdom. Phonological correspondence is very different in Spanish and in English, and the difficulties they entail for native speakers are also different. The predominance of English worldwide has led to…

In this study, I compare the accuracy of automatic speech recognition (ASR) transcription against two measures of intelligibility provided by human listeners. The data came from readings of five texts recorded by 15 language learners of French. Human understanding was gauged by (i) asking a group of 36 naïve first language (L1) speakers of French…

Bilingual children's total vocabulary in each of their languages is often smaller than that of monolinguals. In their seminal study, Bialystok et al. (2010. 'Receptive vocabulary differences in monolingual and bilingual children.' "Bilingualism: Language and Cognition" 13 (4): 525-531) divided children's vocabulary into 'home' and…

The Interface Hypothesis proposes that the pragmatic-discursive interface with syntax is more vulnerable to crosslinguistic influence than the syntactic-semantic interface [Tsimpli, Ianthi, and Antonella Sorace. 2006. "Differentiating Interfaces: L2 Performance in Syntax- Semantics and Syntax-Discourse Phenomena." In Proceedings of the…

This article compares metalinguistic awareness among emerging bilingual and multilingual learners of English in Norwegian primary school. Participants were 120 students in grades 5-7 (aged 10-13) attending mainstream English classes in Norway and were divided into three groups based on a linguistic background questionnaire: an L1 Norwegian group,…

The acquisition of communicative competence in second and foreign languages requires the incorporation of verbal and non-verbal elements. Notwithstanding, few studies have performed empirical research into the acquisition of non-verbal signs. This research studies the learning of emblematic gestures for students of Spanish in the USA using an…

Relative clauses have long been examined in research on first (L1) and second (L2) language acquisition and processing, and a large body of research has shown that object relative clauses (e.g. 'The boy that the girl saw') are more difficult to process than subject relative clauses (e.g. 'The boy that saw the girl'). Although there are different…

This study investigated how input frequency (i.e., type frequency and token frequency) and proficiency levels enhanced the perception of English nominal suffixes by first language (L1) Thai learners. Based on the Usage-based Account (Tomasello, 2003), it was hypothesized that input frequency, i.e., token frequency (frequency of derived forms…

Shared book reading is necessary for learning Chinese as a second language (L2), but its effectiveness requires further empirical exploration and support. Scholars emphasise considering parental and child characteristics alongside school-based interventions. Guided by the bioecological framework, this study included three groups: an experimental…

The study sought to understand the general trajectory of children's executive function, as well as whether there was heterogeneity among monolingual English-speaking and dual language learning children in their growth of executive function. In addition, the study examined whether monolingual English-speaking and dual language learning children…